


Specularity

by Niobium



Series: Jane Foster Works [10]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Awesome Jane Foster, F/M, Fluff, Jane Foster Loves Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:16:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niobium/pseuds/Niobium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane’s bad day improves significantly with a little reflection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Specularity

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt from hariboo: [Thor - Jane/Thor - i see stars in your eyes](http://hariboo.livejournal.com/325667.html?thread=2877987#t2877987)
> 
> I literally have no excuse for this.

***

Jane was having a bad day. A bad week, truth be told, but today was the worst so far. She hated grant deadlines, she hated governments, she hated firmware, and she really, _really_ hated technological limitations. Also, there was no coffee in the coffee maker, and they were out of the tea she liked, so she hated the Tower kitchen too.

She took a deep breath, let it out, and got a new pot brewing. A few minutes wasn’t that long to wait, and then she’d have some caffeine in her to get her through the rest of the day. After that she and Thor could have dinner and she could spend the night ranting and drinking wine while he listened and reassured her. It was going to be great. She was already looking forward to it.

She heard someone come in, and glanced up from glaring at the floor to find Steve settling himself at the breakfast bar. He had his artpad and pencil box with him.

“Hey,” Jane said, and Steve smiled.

“Hey yourself. How’s things?”

“Awful. You?”

Steve was good at not rubbing his positive mood in the face of people who couldn’t share it. He sobered and said, “What’s up? If, you don’t mind me asking.”

“Humanity’s desperate refusal to embrace technological breakthroughs and make them available to the planet so we can improve our daily lives,” she said. The smell of brewing coffee began to fill the kitchen, which eased her nerves some.

“Ah,” Steve said. “Project setback?”

“Set _backs_.”

Steve winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Hopefully tomorrow is less frustrating.” She leaned against the counter. “What have you been up to?”

“It’s been a slow week, so thankfully not much except training and planning and drawing.”

“Drawing anything in particular?”

Steve tapped on his sketchbook. “Thor, actually. We both had some free time, so I figured, why not.” He paused, eyes flicking to the hall, then said, “Did you want to see?”

Steve wasn’t intensely protective of his art, but he didn’t usually offer it up either. Certainly Jane hadn’t ever seen anything he’d done that wasn’t specifically her or the other scientists working in the lab. (He’d done a few sketches of them all hard at work, which Tony had subsequently cajoled out of him and framed for prominent display in the Tower Lobby.) 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, look—if there’s anyone I don’t mind showing drawings of Thor to, it’s you.”

Jane pushed off the counter and moved to the bar, and Steve flipped the pad open to a spot towards the back. There were three full pieces interspersed by several pages of sketches. The sheer variety in the studies, as well as the neat notes scrawled alongside some of them, suggested he’d asked Thor to try numerous poses each time before settling on one. 

The first piece was an athletic pose with a staff from the training room, which Thor tended to use more like a spear, done in charcoal. The sharp, black edges made it a bold piece and gave it a sense of power stopped in time. The second was him in his armor with Mjölnir, a sort of ‘candid’ presentation of him prepared for anything. That looked like it was drawn in colored pencil. And the last one...

This piece was in pencil, and unlike the previous two it was a nude. Thor’s expression seemed to be the focus of the piece, since the rest of him was done in an abstract manner, and what an expression it was. She’d seen that look leveled at her before—a few times actually—but one instance in particular stuck in her mind.

“Wow,” she managed to say. Her face felt warm. She was probably blushing, and wasn’t sure if this meant her day was improving or worsening.

Steve was gracious enough to mask any notice of her reaction. “Thanks. I wanted to practice drawing expressions some.”

“Yeah?”

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

Jane sensed there was a side to the story of this drawing that she wouldn’t be getting from him. So she said, “It’s really incredible. They all are.”

“Thanks.” He closed the drawing pad, and Jane had a sense some sort of spell had been broken. Behind them she heard the coffee maker beep. She cleared her throat and made for the cabinet. 

“Did you want some?”

“Yeah, sure.” She busied herself filling the mugs and then doctoring hers, hoping it would give her face time to stop glowing. As soon as he handed Steve’s to him, he frowned and pulled out his phone. 

He scanned the message and sighed. “Looks like our slow week is about to be over,” he said, and gathered up his drawing pad. He held up his mug in a salute and made for the hallway. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome. Thanks for showing me the...” She gestured at the drawing pad. He gave her a sly smile just before disappearing from sight.

Jane took her time with her coffee, staring into it and replaying the memory of a much better week in her head.

***

Unlike this week, the one which Steve’s drawing reminded her of had been a week of triumph. The SpaceX launch went off without a hitch, complete with a successful first stage landing on the barge drone (a fine feather for Elon Musk’s cap) and the release of the three deep space probes. _Banneker_ and _Hypatia_ were now speeding to Uranus and Neptune, and _Leavitt_ was on a path to Saturn and then out of the solar system. It was the culmination of a three year project Jane had undertaken with Stark Industries and SpaceX, and she couldn’t have been happier.

Tony threw a huge party, which Jane went to because it would have been ridiculous not to. More than a few of her scientific idols were there, and there were presidents of universities and deans of departments and politicians for her to make feel uncomfortable about scientific education funding (or the distinct lack thereof). It wasn’t her intended celebration, though. She had something much more private in mind for that.

Natasha showed her where to get the satellite imagery, all several compressed terabytes of it, and Darcy helped her search through it for the best spot. Pepper let them use the company jet and got them a helicopter which would meet them at the airport and take them to the closest trailhead. And Jane timed the trip so she and Thor would reach the end of the desert trail just at sunset. 

Even this late in the day it was incredibly hot out, hot enough that most of what they’d packed, by weight, was water. Over the course of the gentle three mile walk through hardy sage, rock rose, and quaking aspen they drank close to half of it. Jane found herself grateful that Bruce had been sure to send them with a pair of the new portable filtration kits; they might need them for the hike out tomorrow. They were hot and sweaty by the time they’d arrived, and it was entirely worth it.

It wasn’t large, as salt flats went; nothing like Bonneville or Salar de Atacama. But due to how long and torturous the drive was just to the trailhead (thank you Pepper for that helicopter) few people came out to it, especially in high summer like this, so it was pristine. The ivory pan’s scaled pattern spread out along the valley floor beneath a few inches of water, gleaming like cracked ceramic set in glass. The failing day’s sky—dusty blue separated from the red orange of sunset by a band of dove gray—was reflected in the water covering the flat. The black, lava rock hills ringing the narrow valley gave it the look of a colorful painting in a crude, wrought iron frame.

“Lovely,” Thor said, and Jane grinned. There wasn’t anyone else around that they could see or hear, and if Maria’s friends in the National Park Service had been right, there wouldn’t be. They had the place to themselves.

“This isn’t the half of it.” She lead him further along the edge of the flats to a spot where the bright shallows gave way to a splotch of blue-black, just big enough for a handful of overly friendly people. She knelt down and felt the water, checking the temperature. It was comfortably warm, and should be perfect once the sun was down.

“You mean for us to swim?” Thor asked.

“You bet.” She stood and looked around for a good spot to spread out their blankets. “But first, I want some dinner.”

They’d packed things which wouldn’t require cooking or reheating, so it was more of a victory ‘picnic’ than a victory meal, but Thor declared it the later anyways as he opened the flask of sherry and offered it to Jane. They arranged the thick, comfortable throws over a foam pad in a place which offered an unobstructed view of the flats and watched the sun turn the valley dark red and orange and then dusky violet as they ate. By the time they were done with the dessert (the most decadent chocolate raspberry cheesecake brownies Jane had ever had; she needed to get the recipe from Sam) the first stars were making their appearance. They waited a short spell to let their food settle, and made their way to the pool. 

The heat of the day would be with them for some hours yet, so shedding her clothes felt good to Jane rather than cold or revealing. Thor dropped into the water first, bobbing back up after a moment and smoothing his hair back. She slipped in after him, careful to avoid a collision, and was surprised at how warm and smooth it felt, almost heavy. 

The drop-off was quite deep, but there were narrow rock outcroppings they could perch on with the help of the mineral-heavy water’s buoyancy. They swam around, alternating between splashing and grabbing and evading one another, until it was full dark and the arm of the galaxy was visible overhead. Then they set to floating on their backs, and the flats reflected the sky around them so perfectly Jane felt like they were drifting through it. She only wished the pool was wider so she could swim from one end of the universe to another. 

After a long spell of silent contemplation Thor left off his floating and swam to the edge pool. He took a ledge in one hand and pulled Jane to him with his free arm. The tips of her toes just barely brushed the colder water beneath them. They spent several minutes enjoying the feel of sliding against one another, and taking turns being the one to hold on to the rocks so the other could make use of their hands. It was a delicate balancing act, and more than once they lost hold and wound up sputtering. But rather than break the mood it only seemed to be winding Thor up, and finally he hauled himself out of the water and gave her the plainest ‘come hither’ look she’d ever received in her life.

She was slow to follow him, instead spending a minute to savor the view of the sky and its twin face in the water. She tracked what she thought might be the gleam of a satellite speeding overhead. 

It was a short trip back to their little camp, and the water evaporating off her skin felt marvelous in the night’s still heat. She stopped twice more to look out over the water.

Thor had already settled himself on the blankets by the time she joined him. The glow of the sky overhead left only the barest outline of him, but she could see the blue of his eyes behind the starlight they reflected. She stopped, wanting to take in the sight of him just as she had the stars on the salt flats.

It was easy for her to think of him like she did a star. They were both beautiful and brilliant and no matter how much she learned, she always felt like she’d only just begun to comprehend them. She could study them as much as she wanted, but she’d never know their true beginnings and wouldn’t live to see their endings. Her life was a mere moment in theirs. Yet try as she might, she couldn’t regret that or find it sad. It meant she had her entire life to experience that moment.

At some point he noticed her admiring him, and he met her gaze without hesitation. There was no encouragement for her to hurry up in his features, no smug satisfaction at the attention; just the overwhelming sense that he was hers to take, whenever and however she wished. This was the look Steve had captured on a piece of paper in his artpad. Her time with him might only amount to a moment of his life, but it was _her_ moment. 

So she stopped wasting any more of it by standing around staring at him.

***

Their apartment in the tower was a far cry from the desert salt flat. There were no stars to see out the window; in their place was the glowing city, hazy with autumn fog. Climate control kept the temperature and humidity note perfect, and at night the only sound was their breathing.

He’d cooked her dinner and even done the dishes, and now as they laid in bed the trials of that week seemed miles away. The thing which she’d been reflecting on all afternoon, though, didn’t. “Steve showed me the drawings he did of you.”

“Did he?” Thor idly stroked her leg. He was lying on his back with an arm around her, and she’d draped herself over him. “What did you think of them?”

“They’re really good. He seriously needs to go to art school.” She paused, thinking about the last piece. “The pencil one, where he focused on your expression, was especially nice.”

“I am not surprised you find it so.”

“Why?”

“Because I was thinking of you when he drew it.”

Jane shivered. “Yeah?”

He squeezed her hip. “He told me to focus on something which would be sure to effect my countenance. He said I was not to stare blankly or attempt to look stern, and suggested you might be an ideal subject.”

Her breath caught in her throat for a moment. Then she said, “We should go to the salt flat again.” 

“We should. That was a fine outing.” Thor sounded unfazed by what had to seem like a sudden change of subject. She saw him look out over the dark room towards the window. “You were like some rare and fleeting creature who’d pulled me into a world built in the night sky. I would have but a moment with you, and then you would be gone.”

Jane muttered, “How are you even real,” into his collarbone. He laughed.

“Too much poetry? Would you prefer I describe you in coarser terms?”

“Maybe.” She rolled back onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow. “Is that where you got that from? Some old Æsir sonnet?”

“Our lessonsmasters insisted we read such things to improve our manner of speaking. They wouldn’t have us embarrassing the Realm in front of other races with crude speech.”

She reached out and traced a line from his temple to his chin. “Well, it worked.”

His mouth twitched in a smile. “I am glad. I do not think I could summon words of my own to properly describe that night.”

“I bet you could.”

He didn’t seem convinced. “I am no wordsmith, nor was I trained as one.”

“I think you’d do fine.” 

He raised his eyebrows. “Would I?”

“Yeah.” She moved her hand to his stomach and trailed her fingertips down in a feather-light touch, and he mmmm’d. “Try it,” she said.

He licked his lips and studied her, eyes reflecting the city light from the window. “You were watching me—do you remember that?” She bit her lip at the memory, and he smiled with triumph. He reached over and pushed gently at her hip, encouraging her to lie back, and when she did his hand slid inward along her thigh. “Of course you do. You looked at me like you wished to memorize that moment.” She reached up to touch his face, and he kissed her palm and nibbled on her fingers. 

Her eyes half closed. “I did,” she said.

He rolled onto his side and leaned against her, his face close enough that she could feel his breath when he spoke. “So did I. I saw the stars in your eyes, and I wondered if it was only the light of that place.” His fingers delved further, and she arched her hips against his hand. He kissed the hollow of her throat. “Or, if they’d always been there and I’d merely failed to notice them before.”

She grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head back so she could kiss him, hard and insistent, and in counterpoint to her demand his fingers continued to move slowly and methodically. Not until she broke the kiss with a gasp did Thor let Jane drag him over her, and even when she was digging her nails into his back he took his time. It was as frustrating as it was electrifying; he murmured all manner of things to her, most of which she didn’t catch or had simply forgotten by the time they were spent.

Afterward they passed several minutes trading idle caresses and saying nothing, just watching one another. Eventually they took their turns in the shower and brushed out one another’s hair. 

As Thor settled against her in the bed, she mumbled, “Not bad,” into her pillow.

He laughed, low and quiet. “Take me again to your place in the desert, and we’ll see if there you might inspire me to prettier words.”

She smiled to herself. She might do just that.


End file.
